Cherry picking

One of the most challenging questions you'll ever answer on Microsoft's .NET Framework is how much of it you're going to use.

It is great for solving large architectural problems and C# is probably in the running for my favourite language ever.

Thing is, you don't have to take all of it, and if you're developing for the web, you really shouldn't. Microsoft offer a lot out of the box with ASP .NET, superficially neat controls that on the surface, save programmers a lot of time. In my experience, they cause more problems than they are worth - and are probably responsible for innumerable spats between design and programming teams the world over.

Postback is another area where Microsoft attempts to do you a favour. Again, it saves time and again, it causes problems. If you use postback or server controls, get used to hefty page weights (through auto-generated ID tags and Viewstate ) and a lot of Response.Redirects in your code. It makes maintenance a pain and means that programmers end up doing more of it than designers ( "oh, can you just make it go here!" ).

Microsoft have to be applauded for the platform as a whole, but their appreciation of the web leaves a lot to be desired. Postback and ASP .NET Form-like server controls are time-saving antidotes to the stateless nature of the web, but you've got to ask whether the cure is worse than the disease.